Lover of shiny, glittery, georgous nails!

#clairestelle8sept challenge – Marble

Hi! The latest prompt in the #clairestelle8sept challenge is marble. I’m not brave enough to try a water marble just yet, so I wondered how else I could interpret the prompt. I did a bit of googling and found a technique called dry marbling (also drag marbling and needle marbling!) which looked doable. I decided on a blue palette, and started with a coat of Sally Hansen Blue Crush. Blue Crush is an electric blue shimmer, and the colour reminds me of the mascara I used to wear in the 80’s!

Please excuse my middle finger, I dented it doing the photos.

I did the marble one nail at a time. I added a second coat of Blue Crush, then added random drops of three other blues while it was still wet. I used a very small dotting tool to drag the polish around for the marble.

I’m really happy with the result, especially for something I’ve never tried before. The three blues I used for the marble were OPI Miss Piggy’s Big Number (darker blue shimmer), Models Own Asscher Blue (mid blue) and Nails Inc The Tide Is High (pale blue).

As you can probably tell from the last photo, I stamped over it. I used Essence Stampy Black and Born Pretty Store plate BP-50.

I chose a pattern that reminded me of water marble designs and stamped away. The Essence Stampy polish worked well, but I hadn’t realised it was a matte polish (the big ‘matte’ on the handle should have alerted me!) It was more charcoal than black until I put a coat of INM Out The Door over the design to seal it all in. Obviously using top coat means I lost the matte effect, but that doesn’t bother me and I preferred it glossy.

It does make me think of a blue zebra design! I am very happy with the outcome though.

If you’d like to see more challenge manis, search for #clairestelle8sept on Instagram.